If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid carries through with his threat to change filibuster rules via a majority vote next week using the so-called “nuclear option”, Obama in theory would have major leeway to install a new Homeland Security secretary and circumvent GOP opposition on the Senate floor, giving the president the ability to make his choice knowing full well that he doesn’t need to attract any Republican support to confirm the nomination.

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Napolitano on difficulties of job

”If Democrats actually do the nuclear option, it would reduce the confirmation process to one party rule. President Obama could install controversial nominees with a complicit Democrat majority and no real input from the opposition,” said a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The selection of her replacement could be the first test of a scaled back check on the President’s power.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a blistering statement released late Friday afternoon, said that should Obama eventually sign the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill, “the next DHS Secretary gets unchecked discretion over U.S. border security.”

“The nuclear option would make it possible for the majority to ram through a partisan nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security – who will then oversee border security, immigration, and counter–terrorism policies – with no minority input,” he said.

If the Senate is unable to somehow defuse a fight over the Senate rules on Monday evening when the entire body is set to gather in the Old Senate Chamber for a meeting of all membership, Reid looks set to lower the threshold on executive nominee’s procedural votes from 60 to 51 as early as Tuesday. Democrats are fired up to pursue the rules change because of nominees teed up up for weeks to lead the Labor Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Export-Import Bank and National Labor Relations Board.

The rules change would immediately impact a pair of nominees currently winding their way through the Senate committee process: Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Todd Jones to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who top Judiciary Committee Republican Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has signaled he would like “paused.” And there are open questions over whether those nominees can get the support of enough Republicans to defeat a filibuster.

If Reid pursues a rules change for executive nominees, they wouldn’t need to. Neither would Obama’s next pick to head the Department of Homeland Security — or conceivably any other cabinet position.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the committee that will report out the DHS nomination, has indicated support for the nuclear option and told reporters Thursday afternoon that “the president should have a team that will help him do his job.”

“When the president nominates that person, the president deserves a vote and the nominee deserves a vote,” said Carper, the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman.